Tucked away for decades in the vaults of the Bank of Canada, nearly one-quarter million pieces of Canadian gold lay known to the numismatic community yet entirely inaccessible. An extraordinary undertaking by the Minister of Finance, Bank of Canada and Royal Canadian Mint (RCM) resulted in the inspection of these pieces with the finest 30,000 being released into the numismatic community. The remainder of the reserve, some 215,000 coins, were melted into bars and used as financial instruments.

I was fortunate enough to have some first-hand experience in the inspection and distribution of a small portion of the reserve and the coins I reserved for my clients were generally far nicer than one might expect to find. Moreover, these coins represent what the surface of an uncirculated gold coin might look like after decades of storage and no evidence of mishandling or other abuse. Most of the surviving reserve has been disbursed, but some small groups remain.